His scanner wouldn’t work on Linux — so he let Claude study the Windows driver

Christian Schaller, a Red Hat engineering director and long-time contributor to GNOME and Fedora, had a scanner that wouldn't work with his Linux-based computer. The scanner was a Plustek OpticFilm 8200i. Schaller discovered that the manufacturer had used a chipset in the scanner that didn't have a Linux driver to recognize it. He tried to get Claude Code, an AI agent, to generate a driver but had no success for a while.

Eventually, Schaller decided to try a different approach. He fed the post by Tom Crider, known as Glorious Eggroll, on X about using an AI agent to fix a mouse driver using a Windows machine to Claude. Claude was able to help Schaller by running the manufacturer's Windows software, capturing USB traffic, and comparing it to the Linux driver. This allowed Schaller to identify where the Linux implementation was going wrong and make necessary changes.

As a result, his scanner driver not only supported basic scanning but also infrared scanning. Schaller has since released this approach as an open-source project called hw-harness under an MIT license. The approach not only benefited his own scanner but also gave him an idea of how it could be applied to other hardware.

In addition to the scanner, Schaller also had issues with the camera on his Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 14 Aura Edition. The camera on the laptop produced dark images with a yellow-green tint. Schaller worked around the lack of USB traffic in the camera by feeding Claude the Windows driver's configuration files, registry entries, ACPI tables, and device properties. He also used a USB webcam for comparison. With these inputs, Claude was able to help Schaller find and fix issues in the Linux kernel and libcamera.